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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

you may have to switch distros to do that, they way some distros build the software out of sourcecode and the parameters they use during compiling would require rebuilding parts of the distro from scratch...

The problem isn't the sudo command. The root account is disabled. You don't need to disable sudo, just follow the instructions for enabling the root account. Using sudo isn't that hard though. If this is a second user account, you will want to make yourself a member of the "wheel" group and use "visudo" to edit the sudoers file.

You could also try, "sudo /bin/bash". I don't know if this will work however. Another thing to try is "kdesu konsole".

The problem isn't the sudo command. The root account is disabled. You don't need to disable sudo, just follow the instructions for enabling the root account. Using sudo isn't that hard though. If this is a second user account, you will want to make yourself a member of the "wheel" group and use "visudo" to edit the sudoers file.

You could also try, "sudo /bin/bash". I don't know if this will work however. Another thing to try is "kdesu konsole".

Using sudo might not be that hard, but I don't want to use it at all. I much prefer to have the sytem set so that any "admin mode" stuff requires the root password.

Some of the dialogue boxes that ask for a password won't accept the root password, only the user password of whichever user account the system is logged into at the time.

Sure, I understand that sudo has been used in the distro to "add" ease of use (well that's how it appears to me), but I don't want anyone else to be able to carry out admin functions, theres just too much that can be screwed up - I know, because it's usually me that screws it up

It's a bit irritating that it's only these minor "problems", but it's starting too really wind me up! - I suspect that in the near future, it'll annoy me to the point that I uninstall the Kubuntu completely - which I'd rather not do as it does seem very competent. As I say, just small annoyances.

I did change the groups thing, so that I'm in the "wheel" group as well, and had a look at the sudoers file with visudo, but couldn't work out what I might need to change. The "sudo /bin/bash" that you suggested worked fine. The "kdesu konsole" not so - but I don't understand what the difference would be.

So any other suggestions as to what I might need to change to disable sudo or just to make it so that only the root account can administrate the system would be very much appreciated.

Try this "You can make sudo ask for the root password instead of the user password, you can do this by adding the keyword rootpw to the line in /etc/sudoers that starts with Defaults" from this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

will set a root password to enable you to use "su" to administer system in the traditional way.

As far as I can see, apt-get recongised sudo as a dependency, and so will not allow you to remove it without removing ubuntu-desktop, etc. possibly editting the sudo users config file will disable for all users - or just leave it to give yourself choice.

Just as a matter of note: if you select "Recovery" in grub you get level 3 root without X for those time when sudo annoys you. I'm an old SuSE user so sudo was a bit annoying at first but now I find it quite acceptable. You can also write a Nautilus script that open a root Nautilus window. It quite handy and eliminates a lot of the requirements to go to a CLI terminal window.